2007-05-03

Playwright Howard Brenton does St Paul

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

And another one from Radio National’s “Religion Report”: interview with British playwright Howard Brenton. (Not related to RN is this link reviewing the UK performance of the play.)

Excerpt from the transcript:

Howard Brenton: Yes, I think the letters, they think seven of the 14 letters authentic, and they’re very strange, they are the oldest documents of Christianity that we have, because they all predate the war when Judea was closed down by the Romans in AD70, and all the Gospels were written after them,. And so they are the most authentic documents, and they are viewed in that light rather strange, because he never quotes Jesus directly. He says once, ‘I have it from the Lord’ and that’s the matter of you mustn’t get divorces, you know, it’s not allowed. But he never quotes him, he never talks about the parables, he doesn’t describe anything about Jesus’ life, except, he says, he was crucified and rose from the dead. It’s very strange, it’s as if he is inventing it himself.

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